A Note on the Paid Release

The book has gone premium, so I ought to say a few words.

This is my fifth book, but I still don't know where to begin, so I can only follow the usual routine and start with the numbers.

You've all seen the numbers this time, really. They're a little frightening. I'd never even broken ten thousand first-chapter subscriptions before, and this time they said I broke the historical fiction category's record-something like thirty-seven or thirty-eight thousand.

Which brings us back to those two words: a little frightening.

I thought it over, and Yuewen really did a good job with the launch promotion this time. Even I wanted that umbrella, so the numbers must have gotten a boost from the event.

On the other hand, before the paid release, there really were twenty-eight or twenty-nine thousand readers keeping up with the book, and the VIP readership must have been substantial too. The chapter comments were more active than anything I'd ever seen in my writing career: a chapter could pretty much get eight hundred to a thousand comments within an hour. Logically, these launch results shouldn't have come as a complete surprise... but the book only had a hundred thirty or forty thousand bookmarks. Based on my outdated understanding, without a Silver Alliance patron or bookshelf recommendations and the like, the bookmark-to-subscription ratio used to be a very standard ten to one, so I personally lowered my expectations.

I never imagined the results would be this good.

To wrap up all this rambling: these first-chapter subscriptions certainly benefited from the promotion, and certainly from the traffic brought in by Song Reclaimed, which is still hugely popular. But you, my esteemed readers, also showed enough genuine engagement and activity to astonish me. You all delivered, and I hope I can keep the updates steady and work to turn the readers drawn here into readers of this book.

There's no need to say more. I bow in thanks, and thank you all for every subscription, tip, and monthly ticket.

Now, let's talk about the book.

If I just float through it in vague terms, there's really nothing I need to say. But if I get into the details, there's quite a lot to discuss.

First, why write about Eastern Jin? To be honest with you all, I came into this with an escapist mindset. Eastern Jin was great: few historical sources, an obscure period. Writing about it would let me settle down, with less research, less controversy, and less setup.

When I went to Yuewen, I told both the managing editor and editor-in-chief this face-to-face. They were quite supportive and hoped I could pull myself out of the awful state I'd been in with Suppress the Dragon.

But Huya, my old editor from when I submitted Overthrow Han-I don't know whether she genuinely had confidence in me or was just offering commercial flattery-said, "What are you thinking? What obscure dynasty? You're already a Platinum author. Whichever one you write about will become popular."

And I really was anxious when I started the book. You can see that in the synopsis, with its "execution threshold," "a heavenly winning hand right out of the gate," "borrowing a surname," and so on. Most of it was joking, but at heart it also reflected my lack of confidence when starting the book.

Especially things like "dissecting books"... everyone, I don't know whether you can understand this, but when your personal opinion runs counter to the entire world, you involuntarily start doubting yourself! From the moment this talk of dissecting books first appeared, I thought, Isn't that reactionary? I'd always been miserable about involuntarily examining an author's writing framework while reading historical webnovels, feeling that I'd lost the ability to enjoy reading.

Yet everyone else said webnovels were supposed to be dissected that way. That lack of confidence-I'm the reactionary, I'm walking against the current of the entire world-left me completely at sea.

Fortunately, as more readers started keeping up with the book, the quantity and quality of the comments on each chapter became both my greatest support and my greatest pressure, the two existing side by side. Only then did things get a little better.

Next, a big topic. Since this is historical fiction, we have to discuss the research debates everyone participates in most often... this has also been the subject of the most controversy and discussion surrounding the book so far.

Let me say this first: I now feel that the biggest problem with this book is precisely that I've read too much relevant history, literature, and social science. This isn't some humblebrag. It's genuinely had a negative effect.

Before starting the book, I basically bought all the mainstream and non-mainstream humanities and social science books on this period that were on the market, then read as much as I could of the ones I could get through. One day I'll take a picture for you and post a reading list or something, though Mr. Lu Xun had the greatest contempt for people who made reading lists.

But reading a book doesn't mean you can effectively draw on it. The same goes for reading too many at once; it can even have a negative effect. If you've just read a new book, you'll be eager to find some way to express what you've just learned, and that puts it to use. Now that I've read a whole pile in one go, I can't do that anymore.

For one thing, my memory is bad. It's been bad since childhood, bad on a physical level. Even now, the only mobile numbers I can remember are my own and my father's, because his was the family's first mobile phone and I had to remember it. I can't even remember my mother's number... I don't even have memories from before I was six, supposedly just because we moved house once.

And now, after several bouts of COVID, this problem has gotten worse... I'll come back to that later... anyway, I'm left in a fog, having forgotten much of what I read.

Besides, even if you haven't forgotten, having certain books and sources sitting there can still make them difficult to draw on.

For example, I read a book that I suspect even the experts among my readers haven't read-Historical Grammar of the Wei, Jin, and Northern and Southern Dynasties. It was very thick and very specialized. My reason for reading it was simple: I hoped to build a style of language with distinctive Eastern Jin features that readers would accept.

Like "so that ** may know." Although that was very likely a linguistic habit from the late Yuan and early Ming, Water Margin was there, so everyone would assume it was a feature of late Northern Song speech and accept it.

With Eastern Jin, that was very hard to achieve.

I can now draw on only two things from that book. One is "A-who"... hence A-Song, A-Cheng, and A-Hu. The other I more or less remember is "even if"... "even if there were..." but I've actually used it very little.

This book was extremely specialized, and it contained plenty of very concrete information, such as which adversative words and conjunctions first appeared in this period. But you can't use that! While writing, you can't suddenly think, This conjunction might not have appeared yet in Eastern Jin, so I'll change it back, can you?

That would be absurd.

So after reading an entire book, all I got was those two characters: "A-who"!

Then there are conflicts between sources and the way they overlap and overwrite one another... for the Wei and Jin period, sources are scarce, but researchers are plentiful, and many historical records are rather casual. Often, it's easy to arrive at a simple conclusion, only to suddenly discover a new discussion tucked away in some obscure corner. They contradict and overwrite one another, catching you completely off guard.

I'll give two examples, one positive and one negative.

The positive example is this: when did Wang Huzhi, who is currently paralyzed in the book, die?

If you search directly, many relevant sources, including search engines, will tell you he probably died in 348 or 349... which would mean he died right around the book's current point in time.

Where did that come from? It was simple. As a historical figure, Wang Huzhi really had little significance. His main value was appearing as an accessory to Shen Jin. So if you read Shen Jin's biography, you would find that Wang Huzhi was appointed General Who Pacifies the North and Inspector of Sizhou, submitted a memorial recommending Shen Jin, then "Huzhi relinquished his post due to illness." He never made the journey and held Shen Jin up. Further research showed that his appointment as General Who Pacifies the North came in 348-349. Given that he never appeared again afterward, the conclusion was that he died at that time.

At most, you could find some stories in New Account of Tales of the World about Wang Huzhi being a descendant of Wang Dun's faction, which deepened his connection with Shen Jin but did nothing to disturb that conclusion.

It was like how, if we only read the "Biography of the Former Lord," we could easily conclude that Liu Bei studied under Lu Zhi in Zhuo Commandery... looking only at that text, it was a perfectly reasonable guess. I remember that when I was writing Overthrow Han, most Three Kingdoms novels had Liu Bei studying under Lu Zhi in Zhuo Commandery.

What was the reality? In reality, as long as you also read the biographies of Gongsun Zan and Lu Zhi, you would know they studied in Goushi, Luoyang, and that Lu Zhi also went to Huainan that year to suppress a rebellion.

Even any current AI model, if you ask it where Liu Bei studied under Lu Zhi, should be able to tell you it was Goushi rather than Zhuo Commandery.

Wang Huzhi's case was similar.

I'll give you an explicit spoiler: Wang Huzhi did not die around the book's current point in time. He lived at least another five or six years, keeping Shen Jin dangling until he was in despair, before dying or recovering... though he most likely died.

Where did that come from?

This brings us to another central subject of specialized research into our period: Wang Xizhi himself, from the Wang Xizhi calligraphy universe. Calligraphy researchers discovered a letter Wang Xizhi wrote to a clan cousin. Its contents were simple, just greetings between cousins, and it mentioned four or five clan cousins along the way. One line read, "The Inspector of Sizhou believes he has recovered."

The Inspector of Sizhou was Wang Huzhi, who held that post concurrently with General Who Pacifies the North. "The Inspector of Sizhou believes he has recovered" meant that Wang Huzhi felt his health had been fairly good recently, that he was improving.

However, examining the other Langya Wang Clan cousins also addressed by their official titles revealed that Wang Xizhi's letter dated to at least five or six years after the book's current point in time.

So we can infer that Wang Huzhi was paralyzed, that he was alive, and that five or six years later, he briefly thought he had recovered... perhaps he really did recover and retired completely, allowing Shen Jin to go to Luoyang. Or perhaps he thought he had recovered but died soon afterward, and Shen Jin mourned him before taking the opportunity to go to Luoyang on a northern expedition.

Honestly, apart from its calligraphic value, did this letter really have any historical value?

No!

Wang Huzhi himself had no historical significance! Plenty of professional authors simply wrote that he died in 348 or 349, and it affected no scholarly research whatsoever. But he really hadn't died.

And I stumbled across this while flipping through some material or other. Once I'd found it, I couldn't pretend to be deaf and dumb, so Wang Huzhi didn't die at this point in the book. There's no need for everyone to keep posting sources saying Wang Huzhi was already dead. He really wasn't. The ones who were wrong were the experts who had no need to bear any responsibility for that error.

Now for the negative example.

I searched for Xi Chao's mother's surname and couldn't find it anywhere. So when writing, I gritted my teeth and borrowed the surname of Xi Chao's wife, Zhou Matou, pretending they were cousins who married. The very next day after I posted it, a reader corrected me outright and supplied the source: in our Wang Xizhi calligraphy universe, a book commenting on calligraphy mentioned Xi Chao's mother, and her surname was very clear. It was Fu.

Without even thinking about it, she had to have belonged to the Northern Di Fu Clan, Fu Xie's family, because during Western Jin the Northern Di Fu Clan had been a great aristocratic house that stood like a pillar of the state. Only that family would have been qualified to form a marriage alliance with Xi Yin after moving south.

Everything clicked into place at once.

But I genuinely hadn't been able to find it before.

That's what Wei and Jin sources are like. There seem to be so few that you think you've mastered them, then something suddenly pops out of nowhere and you have to revise things... especially people's names, since they also liked to use childhood names, official titles, and all sorts of other things.

Of course, you're also welcome to volunteer additions and corrections like these. Making a change in the backend is very simple for me.

There have also been some very representative disputes...

For example, Banner Chief. This was probably the first dispute I encountered with this book, because the term first appeared in historical records concerning Liu Song, so naturally people asked whether it existed during Eastern Jin. My position was straightforward: if a term appeared at a certain time, the actual thing must have existed before then. There was no need to split hairs over it.

In fact, never mind Eastern Jin versus Liu Song. In my view, things from the entire Wei, Jin, and Northern and Southern Dynasties period can be reused unless there is an explicit statement saying otherwise. There's no need to split hairs over these things.

Then there was the Bohai Gao Clan versus the Gao Clan of Le'an. Many people thought I was making excuses after the fact.

I really wasn't. I'd read a discussion in a paper by an authority on the subject, and he explicitly said there was no need to be fussy about many such places of origin and ancestral commandery designations... people at the time noticed it themselves. If someone moved to a new commandery and held office there, then according to ritual propriety, after three generations, they ought to identify themselves by the new commandery.

But what happened in practice? In practice, some families had gone through seven or eight generations and moved two or three times, yet still clung to their original ancestral commandery.

It wasn't that we were being inconsistent. People at the time were inconsistent themselves.

And as for the Gao Clan of Le'an and the Bohai Gao Clan, if you look at a map, you'll see that Le'an was at the northernmost edge of Qing Province, right next to Bohai. Even if they called themselves the Gao Clan of Le'an, there's no need to split hairs over it.

Unless it was an especially high-ranking house like the Liu Clan of Pei Kingdom that wanted to shut out its poor relatives and explicitly drew the distinction. In that case, there was nothing to be done.

I still remember the first so-called dispute over historical citations that I encountered while writing historical fiction.

During Overthrow Han, a reader suddenly approached me in the group and said I shouldn't write that so-and-so knelt, because people of the Great Han had great self-respect and the Great Han had no kneeling rite. I was dumbfounded, but I still earnestly went looking and found relevant discussions by Zheng Xuan that explicitly described kneeling as a ritual expression of apology and submission.

After reading them, that reader became furious. He thought Zheng Xuan and I had insulted the iron-blooded Great Han in his heart, and he left the group on the spot.

Thinking about it now, why did I bother arguing? People have knees, so they can kneel. If that action exists, it will carry corresponding meanings and attitudes. How could being a person of the Great Han give you so much self-respect that your physiology differed from that of people in other dynasties?

All this boils down to one point: historical fiction inevitably involves historical groundwork, citations, and disputes, but I hope everyone can approach them with an open and reasonable mind.

If there's a clear argument and sound logic, as with Lady Fu and Wang Huzhi above, tell me and I'll definitely make the change. If it's still wrong afterward, that's fine too. When a new, logical discussion appears, I can change it again.

But if there is no specific, clear discussion, we should prioritize the smooth flow of the plot and the expression of the book's underlying aims, rather than nitpick excessively.

Since we've come this far, let's talk specifically about the characters in the book.

Take Gao Jian... I didn't invent Gao Jian. Mr. Tian Yuqing did. He believed that in the Gao family's branch of the Northern Command's military leadership system, above Gao Heng and in the same generation as Gao Rou, there should have been a man who served as a military leader in the Northern Command or Western Command in the capacity of a Refugee Commander.

I merely gave him a name modeled on Gao Rou's.

Similarly, inspired by Liu Jili, I gave Liu Bo a younger clan cousin, Liu Lang... over two hundred men escaped back home, then returned again. It's reasonable to suppose someone like that existed.

Liu Huzi needs no explanation. Although he had no biography of his own, he was Liu Laozhi's biological father, Liu Jian, and should have been an "Elite Soldier" who served as a pillar of the Xie Family's influence in the army.

Including Liu Agan's family, which the experts have actually all recognized as Liu Yi's branch.

I've basically read through the entire genealogy of the Liu Clan of Pengcheng.

With that big topic covered, let's return to serialization and my personal condition.

First, I'll do my best to maintain the updates. If I can't keep it up later, I'll try copying those top authors' six-days-on, one-day-off schedule and work to maintain the overall output. I hope to finish the serialization quickly and cleanly.

But I need to give you all a warning in advance: my health really isn't up to it anymore.

I'm thirty-six, and I can clearly feel my body going from bad to worse... above, I mentioned my poor memory. After my third or fourth bout of COVID this year, I faced a reality that shocked me deeply but that I had no choice but to confront: I might really have brain fog.

In terms of this book, it's only been serialized for a little over a month, and there have already been three or four clear examples.

One was Xun Xian's courtesy name. Xun Xian's courtesy name was Lingze, right?

I checked an encyclopedia and wrote that Xun Xian's courtesy name was Wenze. Then I thought, Although Xun Xian was already a Fifth-Generation Descendant of Xun Yu, Xun Yu was so famous-Xun Wenruo, after all. Didn't he observe the naming taboo? People in Eastern Jin really were broad-minded.

Then I wrote Xun Wenze a dozen or more times.

The next day, a reader reminded me in the chapter comments that Xun Xian's courtesy name was Lingze. How could it possibly be Gongze? He had to observe the naming taboo for his ancestor.

At the time, I thought, Look, a reader has noticed the same problem I did. People in Eastern Jin really were broad-minded.

Then another day passed, and another reader messaged me privately. I checked the encyclopedia again, and lo and behold: Xun Lingze.

Yes, I have no idea what happened. I'd decided that what I saw was Xun Wenze, and even though my brain kept using logic to remind me that this violated naming taboos, and a reader explicitly told me it was wrong, I still wrote Xun Wenze a dozen or more times.

My brain simply couldn't turn that corner.

Another was Shen Jin, whose courtesy name was Shijian. I kept insisting on writing Shilian.

There should have been another one, but right now I can't remember it for the life of me.

Other than brain fog layered on top of the physically poor memory I've had all my life, I can't explain this.

This actually happened during Suppress the Dragon too. Often, as I wrote, I'd lose track of the battlefield directions. I'd be thinking east and write west countless times.

So I hope that when you notice similar cases, you'll remind me promptly, repeatedly, and directly. Once I catch on, I'll definitely correct them.

And it wasn't just this. During serialization, around the end of volume one and the beginning of volume two, I caught the flu. I'd never realized before that the flu could be so severe. I couldn't sleep at all at night, and during the day, sitting at my computer, I went through three packs of tissues.

My physical condition was completely out of control.

Even now, I can hardly imagine that I typed out the last two chapters of volume one in that state.

After all this, I still hope you can understand if something happens, including if I need to take a day off or adjust the updates. It really would be because my body couldn't hold out.

Of course, I'll certainly do everything I can to maintain the updates. I really don't want to return to the awful physical and mental state I was in during the middle and later parts of Suppress the Dragon. Nor do I want to relive the birth, aging, illness, and death of that time, the sorrow of the heart and the resurgence of life.

When I wrote Qin Bao's legs becoming useless in Suppress the Dragon, leaving him unable to move, I wasn't deliberately shaping his character. It was a stark, truthful sketch of my low potassium and my despondent state of mind at the time.

Everyone, I long for a normal serialization that I can handle calmly, comfortably, and with room to spare. I long to build a new, complete story with all of you, cleanly and decisively. That is why I've said these things to you.

As always, I'll take my time writing, and you take your time reading.

But I hope you'll leave more chapter comments and flesh out more wild ideas for me to steal.

That's all.

Happy day after April Fools' Day, everyone.